#mantorok

[tallon-underworld]

I feel like denouncing people’s gods isn’t a great way to make friends with them, but what do I know?

[fog-world]

[ninewheels]

I don't think I've posted about this before (way back when I first had the idea) but here's my pitch for an Eternal Darkness TV series:

One season for each of the three Ancients that Pious can align himself with. Each season has the same basic plot and structure--Alex investigating Edward's death, finding the Tome and reading about past incidents until she's ready to fight the Ancient--but the details change.

The season premiere would always be about Alex coming to the mansion and searching the place until she finds the Tome, and then we see how Pious aligned himself with an Ancient. The Ancient would be different each time of course, but so would other things. The scenes would play out the same way, but the dialogue, the way things are filmed, little visual and aural touches, would all change to suit the given Ancient's modus operandi. In particular, the characterization of Pious would shift in such a way as to emphasize why he would pick which Ancient over the others. I'd want these details to be subtle enough that if you went a long time between seasons you might not notice them, but prominent enough that if you watched the seasons close together, you wouldn't feel like you were watching the same episode over again.

From there, the season would unfold with each episode focusing on a different chapter of the Tome, but each season would feature entirely different chapters. (Seasons would probably be about 6-8 episodes total.) The ten other player characters from the game would be spread out over the three seasons, and be complemented with newly-created characters, drawing partially from cut chapters from the game. New settings should be added, and we probably wouldn't visit the same place twice in one season--the feeling of revisiting a location and being surprised by differences could be done across seasons rather than over a single run of the story. Unlike the other characters, Edward would probably get an episode every season because he's important enough to warrant it, and because his possession of the Tome is how it enters the story in the first place. I wouldn't want to rely too much on the "subtle changes to the same scenes" gimmick, so his episodes would probably all have very different versions of how he found the Tome.

I'd want the tone of each season to shift slightly in accordance with its Ancient as well. Each play-through of the game couldn't change the game mechanics, but we could achieve a similar effect to that in a TV series. The Chattur'gha season would lean more in the direction of action-horror, like a zombie movie, where the feeling of fear mostly comes from constant overwhelming physical danger. The Ulyaoth season would introduce magick and focus on characters trying to understand the threat they're up against, which they only can to a limited extent, but the horror would be in just knowing how out-matched they are in the bigger picture. (A problem I have with the game is that everything is a bit too clearly-explained and grounded in literal terms; I'd try to fix that.) And the Xel'lotath season would hardly include any fighting at all, but be rooted in psychological head-trips, constantly keeping the characters and audience uncertain of what comes next on a moment-to-moment basis. The seasons would probably go in that order as well. Chattur'gha is a simple introduction to the story, Ulyaoth elaborates a bit on the cosmology and lore, and Xel'lotath should definitely be last because it's easier to undermine audience's expectations when they've had two seasons to form some expectations.

This shift in tone would also inform which characters are in which season: Michael Edwards and Edwin Lindsey, for instance, would be perfect for the Chattur'gha season because they're tasty in a fight. If an Edward Roivas episode were in only one season, it would be the Ulyaoth season because he's the one collecting all this information and passing it to Alex. Maximillian Roivas would be talked about in the other seasons but his episode would be in the Xel'lotath one since it's all about his complete mental breakdown. The nature of the final confrontation with Pious and the Ancient at the end of each season would also change in nature to suit the theme.

Finally, shameless self-promotion: if you enjoyed this why not check out my Let's Play of Eternal Darkness. It's eight years old now and it was only my second LP, but I revisited it recently and I actually think I did an all right job, which is not something I easily say about my own work. That link is to the subtitled LP, which I did first. There's also two versions I did with voice commentary, (one without commentary cut from the cutscenes, one uncut) but I never felt I was very good at that. Maybe that's just because I don't like my own voice and verbal ticks. Anyway, I'm working on getting better at it.

[gears2gnomes]

AGDQ 2022 - Eternal Darkness

"Meeting the Old God."

[residentevil7]

the temple of mantorok

[scartzarr]

smol kawaii mantorok orb

[tallon-underworld]

The zombies in Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem vary wildly in height, with some even being shorter than 3 feet tall. This could carry the dark implication that the four Ancients will even zombify CHILDREN who were flayed alive, drowned or psychologically tortured back to life.

Or they’re just really short adults idk

[fog-world]